I am originally from the Netherlands (now in USA). Our early TV used to be a lot like in the UK. We had 2 Dutch channels and 2 German channels. Everything else (UK, Belgium) was too far away for our neighborhood central antenna mast. I remember picking up German from our two favorite weekend shows: Daktari and Star Trek (TOS). One time in the late 70's I had to go upstairs to watch the Scifi movie I wanted to see on the old black and white (tube operated) TV. It needed time to warm up, and when it finally was ready the audio came first. I suddenly got really scared because the first sound I got was a low and loud grumble (as it turns out, this was the simulated space ship sound). Now, years later, I have a wall clock here in my test lab which I had my parents send to me from the Netherlands. The clock's face is the old colorful TV test pattern that used to run the first half of the afternoon every day before the children's programs started (or sometimes first a 5 minutes headlines newscast). I don't recall we ever had the national anthem on before or after the day's programs.

Re trains -- I remember once watching a cartoon - -I must only have been 6 or 7...
...there was a little train chugging along from left to right ... the "camera" kept on zooming far to the right where there was a bump in the track... then back to the little train ... then back to the bump... then back to the little train ... then back to the bump...
... the excitement was so intense ... then ...
... my aunt called us into the other room for supper ... she was not swayed my my arguments about the importance of seeing what happened...
...now, 48 years later, I still wonder if the little train made it through :-)

I LOVE that movie (although I haven;t seen it for maybe 25 years now) -- in fact for some reason I have the DVD version here in my office (I need to watch it again) -- Anthony Quinn was perfect in that role ... I especially like the bit where the two guys are dancing at the end...

ah then came colour and BBC2,
so that the TV's could be demonstrated, BBC2 used to broadcast 'trade test color films' in the day time, on the bottom of the hour I seem to remember.
http://www.testcardcircle.org.uk/ttcf.html
that is apart from the one real BBC2 day time program, play school that was on at 11:00, and used to demo many a new color TV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_School_(UK_TV_series)